Allen & Heath Qu-3 vs Yamaha DM3

0:00 Don't adjust your dial, you're in the right place. Welcome to Office Hours, Wednesday edition. My name's Chris and I got all my friends here. If you want to ask a question, you can use this little QR code or go to askofficehours.global. That's the thing, that's how that works. But we're going to take some questions that have already come in and we're going to talk

0:27 more about how to do that. So let's see. Courtney, I think you're reading today. Good morning. Indeed I am. Good morning, Chris. Our first question comes from someone who's here on the panel today in Columbia, South Carolina. Jeff Francis asked, Fairlight Live software mixer. Thoughts? Has anyone used it in production? And would you? Go, Jeff Francis. So I've just started playing with it, and I'm talking about the Blackmagic Fairlight software only.

0:55 they have hardware controllers for it but the software itself is free so it's a it's a you know looks like DaVinci Resolve mixer one of the really cool things that's built into it is it has a built-in recorder that you can ISO record all the audio within it records right to WAV files so that's something that I've been playing with so you do you know live recording or live mixing

1:21 through it and you can capture everything ISO. Also I have one of these I know we all like these little Korg nano control guys and you'll notice that it plugs in and connects and we can do mute and faders and so that's a pretty inexpensive compared to the 3000 and up hardware controllers that that Blackmagic will sell you. So this is something I've just started playing with.

1:55 It has some pretty good companion integration as well. So like literally there's a loudness meter in there and you can have that show up on one of your companion buttons, a live loudness meter and things. So just wanting everybody else's thoughts. I've been playing with it. I've not used it on a show yet. And I'm kind of wondering, are we still a little early in the development stage

2:16 to trust this on an event? Jeff Cohen? know, EQ and compression and all that stuff, including the additional optional native plugins that you can put on different channel strips. If you're familiar with all the bussing and everything, how that works, as far as I could tell, it's all the same. So the question is,

3:03 I mean, it's been around obviously for a long time independently and then part of DaVinci Resolve and it's had recording for a long time. So what is the question of course, is it's reliability, reliability, latency and everything else in live. Courtney? Yeah, I tried it early on and it didn't see all of my audio hardware. So maybe that was just the first version that didn't pull Windows correctly

3:32 or maybe I didn't have the right ASIO drivers loaded that it liked. Of course, Fairlight has been in the recording, digital recording business longer than almost anybody. Starting with, you know, They were one of the first ones that had a sampler out that was used by everybody with a keyboard for playing back digital sample sound. And they've been around in the recording industry as a recorder for many, many years.

3:56 I was going to ask Jeff if this new ISO recording feature has followed the black magic rule of also creating an XML file. If you're mixing live, does it record, besides the ISOs, does it record a list of what mixes were done with those ISOs? As far as I can tell, no, it does not. So it's just recording WAV files. Again, I've just kind of played with this.

4:24 But no, it just records and doesn't record your moves. It's not an automation. You know, it's a live mixer. It will follow timecode, but I've not played with that aspect yet. I did find with the audio, you said you had problems with the audio drivers. I'm using a Mac version with Dante Virtual Soundcard. I had trouble if I was trying to use a different input audio device and output audio device.

4:53 Once I changed to use Virtual Soundcard for in and out, audio worked just the way I thought it would. But trying to use separate outputs was giving me trouble, at least on the first version. And third-party plugins I've dropped in and I've definitely had some UI issues with those that like, the one I tried I couldn't get the actual display of the

5:19 plugin to change any settings. It was passing audio but for some reason the actual plug-in display didn't pop up. So that what what leads me to think that this is still being developed. In fact when I opened it today to show it there's a new version ready to be downloaded so well now they put those vibe coders on it you know god that was just going to be changing every day all right let's go to the oh craig do you have

5:43 anything you want to say yeah i just wanted i maybe you said it and i missed it i just want to check what platform were you testing it on are you on a mac i'm on a mac yes yeah okay what version OS? No, I mean what version? Only because, you know, plugins, older plugins, some would have trouble from version 26 on Mac OS 26.

6:12 Oh please, I use Pro Tools. I am not on Mac OS 26. I am on Sequoia 15.8. We can roll that out. You know in production we don't use new software. where? I do. One thing I always think is interesting when a company like this wants to take on something as grand as we're going to make a live mixer, is you always wonder, are they doing it

6:35 to fill a product hole in their otherwise rather complete, you know, lineup of tools? Or do they really legitimately feel like, ah, we have much better ideas than everybody else that's out there and we're gonna make the very, very best one. And, well, that changes the product that you're going to get. If they're just trying to fill a hole, I don't know if I want that product.

7:03 But if they really think they have the best one, that's why I think it's interesting when somebody comes out of the blue and they go, okay, I know what you guys have been working with, but we have a whole new idea. Anyway. But it's not really, right? So I'm showing they've had all the hardware for one of these mixing consoles. I get that.

7:24 But my point is, is Blackmagic just trying to say – and I'm not talking about just the free software that Jeff brought up. But did they want to get into audio because, well, we got all this video stuff, so we should have – or do they really genuinely think they're the best? Just a curious thought. It doesn't matter. Let's go to the next question, Courtney.

7:45 All right. All right. Next one comes in from Chris Zapato in Albany, Oregon. Any suggestions for cheap on-air earbuds for talent? Should I get something completely replaceable or something good with replaceable tips? I'm helping our coaches do video interviews. This is going to be a can of worms. Let's just make this short. Go ahead, Courtney. Okay. You know me, Mr. Cheap. I'm using the HYS.

8:15 earbuds here which have the replaceable and boilable and soakable in alcohol earbuds and they have two different types of earbuds and talk about cheap you can get them on Amazon too for 20 bucks so 10 bucks a piece I've been using this particular brand it sounds great look at its score it gets 4.2 out out of 2,800 reviews. So it sounds good.

8:46 It conceals itself pretty well in the ear. It doesn't have any white things dangling out of my ear. And it tucks behind your collar and clips to your collar, so it's handy to have there. That's my suggestion. I guess the first thing is, what are we considering to be cheap earbuds? buds. There's a almost infinite number of inexpensive, just regular buds that you can

9:13 get on Amazon. If you want something that's better quality and not too much money, I consider the OH favorite, Lensol, KZ, whatever they are, to be a good earbud that's not horribly expensive. defensive. If it's for coaches and situations like that, I would go with a more disposable one. They're probably not going to want to use something that somebody else has used

9:38 and just with a cleaned off tip on it or replacement the yellow foam things. And it sounds like they might be in a situation where they might be more prone to getting damaged. Chris, if you're listening, do the coaches need to hear ambient sound too? That's an important question. Answer that in the chat if you're listening live. Bill Davis? I wasn't aware.

10:08 Courtney and I are using exactly the same IFB monitor here at HYS. I bought two of them. I think they were about $25. I did learn a lesson, though, when I was researching it. I had been using these extraordinarily expensive – whoops, I dropped one down there. Both of these are broken now. These were about $250 a piece, and I was using them because they were great sounding and they were super hideable, but they were also super overpriced for what you need unless you're trying to be a security agent on the president's detail.

10:42 I dropped down and I bought a few of these. These are the really inexpensive $10 coil things. They were terrible. Even for just voice-only recording, I found that there was a floor below which you should not go. For me, that's about $25 for the unit itself. Now, that doesn't mean you have to buy a ton of these and give them to everybody who comes in,

11:05 because in most of these cases, you can take the ear tips off or the little coil IFB unit down here on the bottom, them. Or worst comes to worst, you can always take off these little tips at the end and put a fresh one on for each talent that comes in. And that's the way I would go. That HYS one that Courtney has

11:25 is what I ended up with. And that's all I use now. And it works great. So help me out. Are you guys holding up acoustic tubes? Is that what you're saying? The HYS, it's an acoustic tube? Yeah. Yeah, most of these have a plug-in, a 3.5 millimeter on this end. Then there's a long involved. Now, this bad one has this whole weird little kind of plumbing in the middle that's useless.

11:50 But from here to the ear tip with a coil, that is the piece that is mostly able to be taken off and put on. When you say coil, you're referring to an acoustic tube, a clear plastic tube. Yeah, the driver for the sound is in here, and then it's delivered to your ear via an acoustic tube. Yeah. All right. Jeff Collin? I'll do a couple here. First of all, I'll just fill in, luckily, Ronnie left me with the Lensol whatever, so I can just pull it up.

12:21 Anyhow, so this is the Lensol. Alex has recommended many times the KZ-ZS10. The reason the model's interesting, at least because this always stuck with me, is Alex made a point of differentiating that the next one up, in other words, the better one, was too better. In other words, he was hearing so much sound and high frequency and everything else that it became distracting.

12:51 So this was the appropriate level of quality that Alex felt was usable, decent price. Now, I've done both versions of the tip, so I was trying to find a pack. I'll show you this one first. This is another route, which is, and they usually, it's called, like, disposable earbuds for schools. But it's, you know, so you can get them really cheap. I think this is $30 for a 50-pack.

13:20 You can get them even cheaper, you know, if you go elsewhere and you can wait a little bit longer. So that's another route. if you have, you know, it's always if you're sending out a kit or if you just, it's always someone different. And then the other thing we've done and didn't have a problem is with IFBs you can get the individually wrapped disposable

13:43 tips. So we would send out IFB but with a sealed new tip in the box and no one had a problem with that and they were able to put it on. Now do you get it back? That gets another question. Jeff Francis, set us straight. I like the Panasonic ErgoFit. Ten bucks for wired headphones. You can even chop off one ear if you wanted to have them use a single ear.

14:11 And Tim McCulloch in the chat is also mentioning the same one. Yeah, and by the way, on the chat, chat, which by the way, is why you want to go to officehours.global and hit join so you can get access to all of that stuff. Chris Sabato did say that these are just Zoom interviews. So it's not like they're coaches on the sidelines and need to have some acoustic awareness of what's

14:38 going around them. I will say this. I think the best choice of what he's doing probably would be some iteration of the acoustic tube and the appropriate box to, I will also say, I hate wearing those things. I wear one five hours a week and I'm currently shopping for something different. I think they're, the thing I don't like about it is you clip it to the back of your shirt

15:01 and you turn your head and it rattles. And anyway, you hear all the physical noise. Let's go to the next question, Courtney. Maybe it's just because you're the bonehead, you know, rattles. I've been called a bonehead by many people, Courtney. You're not the first. You won't be the last. Go ahead. What's the next question? All right. Coming in from Douglas Carmichael, A&H released the Q3, or it's QU3 today, which brings the

15:33 QU platform to a desktop footprint akin to the Yamaha DM3. What does the panel think? I'm thinking this could be perfect for office use. And he has a link there. Jeff Francis? It's a great little compact mixer. They have the QU3 and the QU3D, which adds Dante. You know, it's a little 19-inch rack space or desktop mixer. 36-in, that's pretty good. I think if you're going to go larger, just plan to go larger.

16:09 So, you know, pretty much if you're going beyond 16, you're probably going to want a bigger mixer than this because somewhere down the road you're going to get up into something even more. Much like the Dante on the DM3D, the Yamaha version, it's a limited to 16 by 16 on the Dante port. One thing this does not have that the Yamaha does is a secondary Dante port.

16:34 So you cannot run redundant on this console. the S-Link below it is for the whole line of Allen Heath interfaces so you can have stage boxes and things but again you're kind of limited in the number of channels so I don't know how many stage boxes you're going to be connecting to this mixer good for little office use it's you know 100 bucks

16:54 cheaper than the Yamaha and if you like Allen Heath style of mixing there you go the mixers this is the the Alan Heath and the digico and that kind of thing is a very customizable setup I find them great if I'm the person using them and I set them up and I'm doing a similar job all the time it's not what I would call as

17:20 volunteer friendly because you can get really lost in the layers and custom custom ability of it so it's just a different way of thinking about setting up mixers Go ahead, Ronny. Yes. So I think this is a great addition to their existing lineup. It sits between the CQ series and the SQ series. And lately the SQ series also got a plus addition where they increased the price a little bit

17:58 and then included a lot of more plugins, et cetera. So this QU is definitely holding its value towards them. And of course, this is a competitor to the vastly popular Yamaha DM3. So I'm not sure if I'm going to upgrade that for an office, but as a conference mixer, definitely. You got a lot of FX engines for small cultural performances. I think it's three different FX engines.

18:37 And I'm not sure which one of the FX engines they are using, but there is a lot of inputs. So you have 16 inputs and as I already said, the Dante option. It's a great small mixer. I'm just not sure if the faders are going to be the quality we would look for. But of course the price is something also to discuss in this.

19:06 It definitely looks familiar. It has this familiar kind of D-Live inspiration for production switchers, so production mixers. So I think this could be a contender. My colleague has a DM3 in his home studio. Maybe I should get this just to annoy him a little bit. Craig? Yeah, the one thing that I was looking at first, just like Jeff was talking about, was the Dante functionality to compare directly to the Yamaha.

19:41 Interestingly, it does say that there is a pay for upgrade to unlock a 32 by 32 upgrade, but their website doesn't have this console listed in the actual purchase area to find out how much more that would be. So that's a little bit interesting. Gives a little bit more functionality. It also does say that with their S-Link connection, along with internal and Dante, you can have up to 128 by 128 channels available for patching.

20:13 That's not how many channels you can work on at any one time, but you can have that many inputs available to select from. We'll let you plug it in. We just won't let you do anything with it. um no it's great because when you when you uh if you've got that you can create uh scene changes where you select uh in one scene you've got an internal input another one so it just means you've

20:38 got all that much to to choose from not not uh not that you can use them all at the same time you can use them uh individually and they also have this cool little stage box that's kind of fun anyway Anyway, let's go to the next question. Okay. I'm sorry, Courtney. I just saw you popped up. Just skip right over me. No, you popped up right when I was showing the screen.

21:00 So go ahead and do your little comment. I was just going to say, I will quickly say, one thing I noticed about was it has automatic mic mixing built in for, I don't know if it's Dan Dugan quality, but it does have an automatic mic mixer. So for doing the live conferences with roundtable type discussions, it could be good for doing that.

21:19 All right. All right, let's move on to the next question from Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas. Alphonic does leveling and loudness in one pass for a few bucks. Is a cloud service like that a better deal than learning to use a compressor? Any answer? Bill Davis. Paul, I know you don't mean this question that you asked the way I was thinking about

21:44 it, but when I first read it, I went, wait, what? But I don't – and this is just me and maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think you can call yourself at all competent at audio if you ever have that attitude of better than learning a compressor. I mean there are these fundamental things in audio that you just can't escape. And I don't care how well AI does in the future in terms of fix my audio prompts.

22:12 prompts, things like compressing, leveling, there's just half a dozen other things that if you don't understand them, you're always going to be in deep trouble if you approach any kind of audio recording and playback. So I know you really didn't mean is some cloud thing better than learning a compressor. But I just, for anybody who's new and trying to get into audio, please don't try to show,

22:40 I know it's complicated and I know these looking at waveforms and figuring out why the tops of these spikes are cut off and does that matter seems hard. But it really is square one. And if you don't understand some of these concepts at a fundamental level, you're going to be struggling your entire career in my opinion. And there's no reason to do that.

23:03 Jeff Kahn? I know you didn't really mean that, but good luck. Jeff Kahn? Let me play devil's advocate. One of my favorite pastimes. Now, personally, personally, I agree 100% with Bill, but there are lots of people that need that result that are not audio people. They're podcasters, they're, you know, content creators, whatever you want to call them today. And they do horrible recordings, but they want to get it out there.

23:34 So, you know, I don't think it's such a bad thing that there are some amazing tools to get them from horrible to, wow, that's an amazing difference. Now, it's not great, but it's, again, wow, what an amazing difference from what you really recorded, which is horrible. These guys, Afonik is, a lot of folks use them. So I was looking because I think it's Podbean is just one of them.

24:01 So even if you don't necessarily even know it, unless you're paying for the tier that lets you upload actually raw because it takes more disk space, they don't want it, then they're going to compress the heck out of it and they're going to run it through tools like this so you automatically get a whole bunch of stuff, you know, not just the leveling.

24:22 And frankly, nowadays, any of the tools that are kind of like an all-in-one recording, Riverside or anything else that you may be doing content with are going to do this. Now, that said, if you're doing real recording like Bill is talking about, I think it's silly to have to pass it off to different software. If you're really trying to do a good recording, then, as Bill explained,

24:46 do it the right way and have one output. Maybe you're using Fairlight and DaVinci Resolve. so you get a fantastic product right when it comes out the box. Yeah, I'll get to you in a second here, Bill. I want to say that I first heard about Alphonic in an interview I did on my show with Matthew O'Brien. He swears by it. He's a YouTuber guy.

25:07 Doc Rock in Hawaii, he uses it on occasion. Raphael Ludwig up in Toronto. It's much more than leveling. Alphonic is, I would throw that into the category of, oh my God, I screwed everything up. Is there any way to salvage this audio? It's really more one of those kind of apps. Yes, it does some leveling. Bill, last comments? Well, I was just going to say, this reminds me of the old thing about automatic gain control, right?

25:36 People who are professionals said, you should never use this. It's horrible and terrible. But most of us got into situations where there was something really screwed up and we punched the button and sure, it did make it better. And I think that's the point that is being made here by Jeff. And he's correct. If you're in a disaster, fix the disaster. But that's never going to substitute for understanding where I've been bitten.

26:06 I'll never forget, I had a thing where it was a set of circumstances and it sounded great on my laptop and it sounded great on the web. And then they took it to a theater and they stuck it in a 5.1 Dolby system and played the same audio. And I was so freaking embarrassed because everything that was hidden by those bad monitoring

26:29 chains suddenly got put out in front of the whole audience and like, oh my God, what did that 60 cycle home come from? I hadn't heard it before. And oh my God, it's chopping out between the phrases. And this is so embarrassing. And so the push button to fix, yes, there's sometimes you have to do it, but please understand that there could be a moment like for me where you

26:58 just really embarrass yourself because you never took the steps to learn how to do better. All right. So let's move on to the next question, please, Courtney. All right. Thanks. One comes in from Jack Cannon in Phoenix, Arizona, building a stage for an event space at my nonprofit Veterans Center. It's in an empty warehouse currently with less than $10,000 budget. What would you focus on? Stage will support podcasts, in-person events and hybrid events and live streams.

27:31 dreams. Wow, Jack, that's a tight budget. Jeff Francis. And wow, Jack, besides a tight budget, there are two very scary words in your question, and that is empty warehouse. We've all been in an empty warehouse. I think your first and biggest problem is going to be acoustics. That's going to be a, you know, you haven't mentioned that you have any equipment, so I'm assuming we're going

27:59 going to need microphones and a PA system, and then you're going to want cameras and network infrastructure and streaming. You're going to need foldback. You're going to need foldback monitors if you're doing hybrid events. Yeah, the budget, you're several orders of magnitude out in your budget. But the first thing I would worry about is acoustics in there, because an empty warehouse can be just a crazy loud place once you get some sound in there.

28:29 So I don't know if that's spray foam insulation, which now you need to deal with. Is that environmentally safe? Is that good for people to be around? Is that fire retardant curtains? Something to deal with acoustics in the space is the first place I'd look. look. Maybe it's in an empty warehouse currently. Maybe there's a different venue where you could look at building this event space. Courtney? Yep, I concur with Dr. Francis. The same thing,

29:01 the acoustics, you know, we learned that in Hollywood the hard way because a lot of companies, independent production companies, you know, decided to move productions like Roseanne and ALF and those kind of shows from the 80s to empty warehouses because they were a lot cheaper to rent than sound stages. And then they got in there and they found out that the decay time was about three and

29:20 a half seconds in those parallel walls, concrete walled warehouses. And the amount that they spent on acoustic treatment just to keep the echoes down to the point that they could record usable sound was way over your $10,000 budget. So yeah, I'd look somewhere else if you, because acoustical treatment in a warehouse can cost a lot of money. And as Jeff Francis said, you got to abide by the fire codes and the health codes and those kind of things.

29:53 And acoustical treatment can be tricky to do and handle all those code violations. Ronnie? Don't make it too high. I guess you have some rules about height and having to add kind of side fences or something. The other thing I would think of is as a kind of answer to some of the acoustic problems you will have, try to see if you can fit in some really thick sewn blankets or backgrounds that kind of box the entire,

30:32 kind of making a black box around part of the sides coming from the back. and make sure you build it a little bit away from the back wall so that you can have an entrance for people coming up from the back of the stage and having the curtain there behind in the back end of the stage. It's also good for hiding stuff when you're rigging stuff that needs to be hidden away

31:00 away so that you don't have to kind of roll it out in the other end of the hole or whatever. Another thing to be really aware of is the need for lighting and rig and trusses above the stage. Be very careful if you're going to hang something from that ceiling unless that ceiling is is certified to carry some load. There's been a lot of accidents in that regard.

31:30 And maybe you need to have floor kind of jacks that are, or lifts that are lifting those and put them into place. So I would use less money on the stage and of course build it as solid as possible and of course have fabric in front of it and on the side. Another way to think of it is, are you saving on something and ditching some other things?

32:02 It's really difficult to get this up and running with that, I would say limited budget. But of course, if you have a lot of volunteers, just building it and make sure it's safe and solid underneath. And also just don't have feet that goes straight down. you have to cross brace them all the way, especially if it's get higher than let's say a couple of feet. And of course, you need to build a stair on each side and maybe even in the back.

32:34 So before we get to Jeff's final words, I just want to say this is why we have the backend system here at Office Hours. Jack is furiously typing in the chat system over here. He's saying that the 10,000 is just for the stage. He goes, we have all the equipment, equipment, all of that. He's just trying to build a stage. So some of the comments that are coming in through the chat system is make sure you have

32:57 conduit to run cables. You might want to run some sort of a thing up to the center if they were going to put a table. I think, Jack, this is more of a construction project than an office hours project. And if you want to call me, we could talk about it. I'd go two by 10, 12 inch centers to make it really solid and one inch OSB carpeted.

33:18 but that's not what we normally talk about here. Jeff Francis, wrap this up, please. Jeff Francis, Chief Executive Officer, ! check with code about heights and I would also make sure that it's ADA accessible. This is a veteran center, so I'm probably going to have someone who needs to access that stage and not through a stairway. And so a shorter stage with a ramp that leads up either one side or across the

34:10 back or something like that makes really useful. It's an entrance for everyone. All right. Courtney, Let's move on to the next question. Sorry we went kind of in the weeds on that one. All right. Next one comes in from Austin, Texas. Paul Wallace says, AI voice clones for pickups. Has anyone on the panel used 11 Labs to fix a flubbed word in their own narration? And did the client notice?

34:38 Bill Davis, what about you? You ever done that? I've never done that specifically because I tend not to use 11 Labs because I'm a narrator and I I have a Rolodex full of great narrators and I could do pickups if we have a problem, things like that. But that said, I'm actually going to maybe surprise some people and say I can't imagine why that wouldn't work.

34:58 Those cloning voice automation systems have become much, much better. They can fool me now for 15, 20 seconds at a time when I'm listening to things back and longer in some cases. The reasons I go with organic human performances today have less to do with it – with fixing small problems. I think automation is really good for that and more to do with that intangible interpretive thing that AI still can't match humans for.

35:30 So if you're not looking for that, if you're not looking for human connection between what someone is listening to and their heart, then these tools are exceptional. I would never tell someone not to use all the AI voice cloning stuff in the world for reading instructions back to you when you're trying to fix or build the shed in your backyard. I mean there's no reason not to.

35:57 But if I'm trying to motivate or move someone, my experiences over the last couple of years working with all the actors I am on the audio book stuff that I'm doing has shown me there is still a qualitative, massive difference between a machine producing content for listening and a human being doing it. I'm constantly shocked and surprised how even me, a longtime voice talent, if I read a line in my comp and then I bring in somebody else, the way they improve it flabbergasts me over and over and over again.

36:43 And the difference in connection to me is all that matters. But that doesn't matter for a ton of work that you should just go ahead and use whatever you want to use. Jeff Cohen, next. Yeah, I've used a bunch of them, not for my own voice. I never think it fits. And to be clear, I mean, I agree with Bill. This is about specific pickups.

37:08 So I've been doing this for years for clients when, but it's, but it's like a word is mispronounced or, you know, one or two wrong words in there. Beyond that, it starts to become really noticeable. And by the way, let me point out, this is with absolute client knowledge, with their permission. Hey, you know, do you want to record a pickup or do you want me to just fix that word?

37:37 And some of these tools have been doing it for years. Descript has been doing it. I'll just show this one. This is an update to what they've had. And then Riverside, I'll give them credit. They have really come a long way. They were just really the recording, and Descript was the champ of editing, especially text-based, document-based editing. But not only do they have audio.

38:04 Well, they'll raise you one and they'll do, you know, you can set up your own video twin, they call it, so that you can fix a video pickup. Or, I mean, you know, you can create a whole video, just give it a script. But to the point of just pickups, and 11 Labs also has, they have two different tiers. They have, I forget exactly what they call it, but it's like the quick or fast voice and then like the professional voice.

38:31 The professional voice, you need, I think, like 90, it's either 90 minutes or three hours, one of those, to do really good speech. The other one is just a few seconds, and it's okay. Same like all these others. Some of them also, I'll say, have tools in place that if you don't have on the platform consent to recreate someone's voice, they'll only let you fix like a couple seconds, again, a word or something.

38:59 So you really sometimes have to play around with what you're recreating and then blend that in. So it sounds natural, but beyond a few words, it is really noticeable. And I will say DaVinci Resolve has also added, they had a weird AI voice thing in 20. In 21, they flipped it around where you can type in the correction in text and have it generate.

39:23 And for better or for worse, it only samples the first 20 seconds of the person's real voice. So whatever clip you give it as a source, the first 20 seconds, for better or for worse, is all it's going to use to rebuild it. And it has been the worst of all of them in my experience so far. And Courtney? Yeah, I'd be careful for my own voice.

39:47 You know, of course, it's probably pretty easy for me to record a replacement. But for someone else's voice, especially if you're working with union talent, SAG-AFTRA and their latest set of contracts, I can quote here from the digital voice replicas, voiceover and sound recording contracts require explicit consent, minimum compensation scales and detailed disclosures before releasing any tone or pitch unaltered digital voice clone or synthetic voice.

40:16 voice. So in other words, yeah, it could save you time. You wouldn't have to bring that actor in, but A, they got to know about it, and B, you got to pay them, even though you're using the synthetic voice in the current SAG-AFTRA contract. So check that contract if you're working under a union contract. If not, you know, anything goes. Just, I would inform the talent that you're going to

40:38 fix up some of their words using AI and make sure they're okay with it without getting compensated. Yeah, it's probably a best practice. Courtney, let's go to the next question. Andre DeLay in Berlin. What's a good source to learn scopes? Mouthwash question. Andre, I haven't actually looked, but I'm going to assume there's probably about a million videos online about different types of scopes.

41:10 And that's a vague comment. Are you talking about waveform vectors, parades, any number of audio scopes? There's a billion different things that you might want to be looking at. Ronny, what's your thought? I would think he's talking about video scopes. And as a reply to what you said, there's a lot of YouTube videos out there that are talking about what button to click to get shown this and that.

41:35 And really easy explanation. One of the big sources that I've been using and also given to my colleagues is the Blackmagic DaVinci user guide. It goes kind of in the deep. They have these kind of tutorials where they have hired professional color graders or professional color graders to make these courses and guides. That has been to some extent kind of helpful, not only talking about click here to show

42:07 this scope and forget all about the technicalities behind the scopes. I'm also, I've been looking at Omniscope. They had some tutorials out there. I can't remember if that was from the company itself or if it was someone else externally that made that. But I think really good usage scenarios for scopes and how to use them. I would say that maybe you, Chris Fenwick, can take on that and create some courseware for us that we can enjoy hours and hours and hours.

42:48 When I learned Scopes, it was so different, and I barely knew enough to squeak by. Bill Davis? I resemble that remark. I will say that it used to be Scopes were hardware. They are all software. They're virtualized. They're much better than the rest of that. But the companies that used to make them had a lot of educational material. So I might do a search on companies like Tektronix.

43:16 used to make a ton of serious scopes. And they had all sorts of manuals and things like that that explain really down to the deepest technical details should you want to take a crazy deep dive. So, you know, you might want to just do an internet search and look back under Tektronix scopes and training manuals or training programs and see if there's some of them.

43:38 And they will know the science behind the scope better than anyone else because that's what their product and take it from there. Jeff Cohn? Yeah, so to Ronnie's point, Blackmagic really has a ton of great training. They have live training classes and some of them are really in-depth. They're like four hours a day, five days, you know, a week long full training on some

44:05 of the, they go really deep. But if you look at, just search for their training site, they have a lot of these great, you know, courses that are ready for you. you can download the actual project file. So this one here, introduction to color, I think this is old. This is, I mean, it's based on an older version, but it's fine. It includes scope. So I

44:26 don't, I don't know to what extent in this introduction color they have, if you email their training, you can get on their list to get the, the schedules for these live training events that they do. Again, they're all free, which is amazing. And they have one specifically that is just on color grading and it goes a bit more in depth as well.

44:49 Ronny, bring us home, teach me scopes in 30 seconds. Yeah, another thing to read out from the question, and this is not because it's too few characters in the question. There is a difference between doing this live and doing this when you edit something. And if I'm not mistaken, this question goes more to the live production side of it. So type Omniscope or Nob Omniscope, et cetera.

45:15 So how to read them in a pinch and what to do to get your cameras to be identical, et cetera. So I think this is maybe a more practical thing. But of course, the way a scope is visualizing visual data is, of course, very similar. color, but the way you use them is vastly different from sitting there like 45 minutes and find that just the eye color of a beautiful person.

45:52 So the usage is vastly different and the way we use these tools are different. So maybe we should kind of try to find a source that is also very good at live performances performances and how to use scopes in a really hectic environment. Live sports is probably the best. I'll tell you one thing. It doesn't matter what you know and how much you read the scope. What really matters is what you do with that information. Let's go

46:23 to the next question. Next one comes in from Austin, Texas, and Paul Valhus, who says, Session Loops PitchNet is free AI vocal tuning that resynthesizes instead of warping if it sounds natural who still pays for Melodyne and he has a link there to the Fender site for plug-in we don't know anybody? I'll give my opinion. Bill wants to say something. Well yeah I was

46:55 just going to say so pitch perfection which I think is what he's talking about here is generally in the realm of singers and people performing that need pitch correction direction to sound more professional than their performance might be. I'm again, like many things, have two minds about that. I've seen really good singers who have a lot of talent who have been temporarily pitch challenged. And, you know, you put them on a stage and they can still sing.

47:25 But we've also seen a lot of people who can't carry a tune in a gigantic 900-gallon bucket bucket who after enough post-production. It would be really heavy. It would sound decent. It would be a heavy bucket. Very, very heavy. Metaphors aside, it depends on what you're doing with it. And I generally stay away from pitch shifting and things like that unless I'm doing some,

47:50 you know, weird character in one of the audio books and I need an alien sounding something where all the tools are on the table because there is nothing I'm trying to recreate that It sounds natural at all. So that's just fun. Anyway, that's all. Courtney? Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of times, you know, pitch correction, auto-tune is used for the effect of it being used poorly these days.

48:16 In other words, you know, you hear the auto-tune jumping to the next note, et cetera, in a lot of hip-hop artists. But if you're just correcting the pitch for a singer who misses it every now and then, I think that removes, it makes the performance too clinical, and it doesn't have that jazzy feel to it. A lot of singers like to sing a little bit off-key every now and then

48:41 and play in the cracks, as they say, sing in the crack. And Ronnie? I'm going to say that the most used pitch tool scenarios we have is karaoke. Damned with faint praise. Let's go to the next question. Next one comes in from New York City. Brody Hefner asks, if you unpacked rental loft mics and you see that they include an unneeded but firmly attached foam windscreens, would you endeavor to remove the windscreens

49:22 or just use them as provided? I take it you're unpacking the mics that you rented, not that came back from your rental and back into your stock. Let's, Craig? So I've got a couple of approaches to this. One is, the first question is, what are you using them for? If this is something where you need a very specific look, if it's on close-up cameras, and how distracting the windscreens are, I would try and take them off.

49:55 But I would also, before that, specify that in my rental order, talking with my regular assortment of vendors to make sure I got what I wanted in the first place. and if they didn't come that way hopefully my production team has got that order in with enough time that i can call the shop and get them to send me the right thing if not

50:17 jeff francis yeah i would uh probably remove them just for those reasons of look um and you know i don't mind tinkering with things so i'll get in there even as they're firmly attached i'll figure out how to take them off correctly. I'm famous for trying to remove something or take something apart and breaking it. I feel your pain, Brody. Bill Davis?

50:41 I'm a victim of what I call degenerated foam windscreen rash. Some of my older Sennheiser 421s came in the original cases, and I guess they used a formulation that literally if you left it three years in a storage unit or something like that, I came in and opened the box. All the foam that used to cradle the mic was just completely destroyed.

51:05 And it got me to the point where if I can get rid of foam in encasing things, I tend to do it. But again, I think it's a reaction to those bad experiences I had with a lot of outgassed, fall-apart foam for many years. I think the formulations are better now. And so, yeah, but I think that's going to continue for the rest of my life.

51:30 I don't like foam windscreens. I like them when I need them, and God bless them if I have a little breeze behind me and I'm getting the low-frequency wind noise. But I like getting rid of them as quickly as I can. Courtney? Yeah, there's two types of foam. One turns into a powder, which gets into the mic elements, and the other turns into gooey mess glue.

51:56 So it depends on what type of plastic was used in the foam. But as far as foam windscreens on lovs go, there are two things to consider. Are you hiding the lov underneath clothing? If you are, you want to take the windscreen off probably because it will rub and make noise on the clothing. and B, you probably won't need it because the clothing will form a wind barrier to the microphone even if you're outdoors.

52:22 If you're not hiding the lav underneath clothing, another thing to consider is besides wind noise, they also prevent pops from a lot of times people snort, you know, will blow some air out of their nose or guffaw or something. and so you might have some it does have some effect as a pop filter depending upon where you're putting it if it's in the explosive zone so take care of that

52:49 and if they're especially if they're painted these days a lot of people are paint matching the lobs of the windscreen and the cable to the wardrobe and so if it comes pre painted be careful about removing it because it's gonna look ugly underneath because it may not be painted correctly directly underneath. All right, well that's that. I want to extend my most sincere thank you

53:15 to all the back-end crew that helps us do this. You know, there's I think seven of us sitting here, but there's actually, we got Alan and Dave and Robert and Michael and Gordon and Vic and JJ and Mickey, all backstage doing things, I gotta be honest, I don't know what all of it is, doing things to make the rest of us look good,

53:34 and I want to sincerely thank you for all the work that you guys do. Also, officehours.global is a 501c3 in the United States, so if you want to help out, if you want to maybe help those other guys, you can go to officehours.global slash volunteer to maybe participate in that, but you can also just help by donating. So go to officehours.global slash donate,

54:00 at least here in the States, anything you choose to give to the organization, that's a cool little tax write-off. So thank you so much for all your questions. We'll be back next Wednesday doing the same thing, but there's shows every day of the week. So go to officehours.global, and you can learn all about the giant ecosystem here. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Courtney was just showing off there

54:24 with the pre-packaged, pre-painted, when you get in the plosive zone. I don't think I've ever had one of the tiny things for a lab. Wait a second. I missed some things. I think the panel, I didn't mention the Talalic Diversal is episode 24, 16, 33,000 miles in the bus, 37,000 kilometers and 181 bananas for scale. 181 million, million bananas for scale. Just squeak that in under the credit.

54:57 I left a link to the Nob Omniscopes in the chat. Nob. To who? Nob Nob. I think we should hide the Talalic traversal in the credits so people stay and watch the credits because nobody watches this show and doesn't want to know how many bananas it represents. Just a thought. Key metric.